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October 14, 2009

Advice

Ok, so my good friend Sho hit my last post with a comment on/critique of the work I posted. At first I found it to be a bit harsh, but in the end I thought it would be worthwhile to put some more work into the piece he took issue with.

Sadly a lot of what he saw as wrong in the piece were things that I also thought were off, but thought I could get away with. I find that this can be a tough thing to juggle in terms of art making, as you never know who's looking at your work. Given the amount of time an artist spends looking at their work, it makes sense that we see issues that most people wouldn't notice at a glance. And when it's going to take several hours to repair a problem that most people won't pick up on, you're stuck wondering if it's really worth it.

It is.

In the end , if someone knows what they're doing, they'll see all the flaws right off the bat, and then they'll have a hard time seeing what's good about the piece. You don't want that. So if you can see problem areas in a work that you want to shine, take the extra time to fix them. Instead of cringing at the idea of reworking something from scratch, see if you can figure out a way to edit it without having to redraw it. That way you will have learned a new skill (or polished up on one you use often) and it will still feel like you're moving forward on the piece, instead of scrapping something you liked so that you can draw on top if it.

Here's the corrected version of the Suited Indian illustration I did up for Y.

What do you think, and improvement, or a waste of time?

I'd like to throw a thanks out to Sho for being one of the only people to really take a hard look at my work. As nice as it is to get compliments about a piece, a well thought out critique is a lot more valuable.